Thursday, November 22, 2012

Long Game of Twilight Imperium

Have not seen any posts here in a long time. Mark and I
played a LONG game of TI3 with some friends this past Monday. It was an almost
12 hour session. Part of the slowdown was due to 2 inexperienced players. Part
of it was that we had a seven player game.All said it was an excellent game.Rather than go into detail about the flow of the game, I would like to
share some of my experiences with winning and losing this epic “mini-monster”
of a game.

I think that when people sit down to play TI3, that very
often they revert back to simpler days of gaming and games such as RISK! Enter their
minds. The mentality of conquest and warfare take control and they go into “Attack
Mode”.But that is the perfect strategy
for losing this game if you ask me.So here
are a few tips that are worth considering:

1)Always make decisions based on Victory Points
(VPs). Yes sometimes you need to make a quick reactive decision or you need to
pounce on an unexpected target of opportunity, but do this in the shadow of
getting VPs.

2)Don’t do something just because you can. Have a
really mean and nasty Action Card? Don’t want it to go to waste? Sure, go ahead
and use it, but think about those VPs. Are you going to make someone angry?
Sure that can be a lot of fun, but it may hurt you in the long run.

3)See a juicy planet lightly defended? Should you
take it from another player? If it dosent help you gain VPs then maybe the
answer to that is “No.”If you take it
then the other player may amass a fleet to get it back. Maybe you don’t want to
let him have it back. You may spend 10+ resources beefing up the defenses of a
planet that is not going to help you gain any VPs and miss an opportunity to
cash in on the good old “I Now Spend xx Trade Goods for 1 VP”.

4)Ok, so you decided to take a planet from your
friend…maybe you did not really like him too much anyway.Before you get in a really nasty shooting
match with him, why not offer him a few trade goods for his trouble. Bury the
hatchet and make him feel better.Maybe
he’ll use that money to attack someone else.

5)Did some mean and un-feeling slimy alien seize
your planet, destroy your ships, and kill your troops on some distant little dust
ball of a planet whose name escapes you?Do you really NEED that planet?Before you call a jihad on it and sacrifice a bunch of VPs, maybe you
can use this experience to make a new friend. “Ok, Mr. Insect Guy, now that you
have got what you want, lets talk this over and be friends.”May not work, but it’s worth thinking about. Maybe be is really not such a bad guy...maybe he just needed the VPs.

6)Have some good trade contracts?I just love those! Most people like to trade
them for other big juicy trace contracts and that’s great. But they can also
help secure friendships and cooperation. If someone wants to attack you just
remind him about that trade contract he has with you. Remember that insects and cyborgs have
big guns, but no one really wants to buy their crappy products. Maybe you can just to
play nice.

7)Remember that in TI3 good friends are the very
best thing that trade goods can buy!

Shards of the Throne is an excellent
expansion.We are considering letting
the winner of this game (Who pulled off a brilliant win with perfect use of the
Bureaucracy Card) play the Lazax in the “Fall of the Empire” scenario this
December. Still not sure if we will play that or the standard game. Have played
“Fall of Empire” once before and I liked it.

1 Comments:

This time we used the "Preset Board Option". I have mixed feelings about this. Overall I did like it and would like to use it again. I just feel that there is something to be said about those random boards with big voids, uneven planet distributions, and rich/poor sections of the galaxy. Both methods have their arguments.